1

1972 Midnight.

Paulette is still awake. A thin, freezing wind slips through an inch of open window and makes the curtains dance. When the room is cool, Denton sleeps heavy and won’t feel the weight of her head on his chest or the leg she drapes over his, running the sole of her foot from his knee to his ankle.

She pulls one of his arms around her shoulders like a fur stole and nestles in. Skin on skin. The smell of Denton is pure man – sweat, soap and sex.

Bonfire Night come Saturday. Paulette’s going to ask Denton if they can go to the big display in town and watch the rockets and Catherine wheels making patterns in the sky. They could eat candyfloss and toffee apples and mingle with the crowd. He could wear the good leather driving gloves she got him last week. The thing is, Denton never likes to make plans too far in advance, says he doesn’t know his shifts and he doesn’t like to let her down at the last minute. There again, Saturday is only three days away, so Paulette is hoping.

She feels a warm slick of sweat run off her breast and, suddenly, she’s too hot. She doesn’t sleep so good when Denton stays over because the man takes up more than his own half of the bed, and anyway, she likes to make the most of their time together.

She slips from under the blankets and shucks on her dressing gown, the one he bought her for her birthday, the one he didn’t even get a chance to wrap so she saw the price tag. Paulette had to pretend she didn’t notice because the thing wasn’t that expensive, but she had to remember they were saving, saving, saving. A house one day. Semi-detached, car on the drive, flowers in the front garden on a nice quiet road, grass on the verge and street lights that worked. That’s the plan. They’re a year and a half into it with a couple more to go. Before long, she’ll have everything she wants. Patience, Paulette.

She stands at the window to catch a little cool breeze and parts the curtains for a splash of moonlight on Denton’s face. How can a man have beautiful eyes even when they’re closed? High forehead, close-cut hair and skin oiled so slick it shines. Yes, Paulette looks the man over like she’s searching for disease but all she finds is things that makes her love him more.

She’s pulled back to the window by a noise in the garden next door. New neighbour putting her rubbish in the bins. It’s late to be up when you’ve got children. White woman, about Paulette’s age. Red hair in plaits on top of her head. Irish or something. Not a smiling kind of person but then she’s got one baby and one toddler and no man as far as Paulette can tell. Some people might get funny about the amount of noise coming out of that house day and night but there’s something about the cry of a baby that twists at Paulette’s twenty-nine-year-old womb.

When the alarm goes at eight, Denton’s side of the bed is empty. He went straight into the shower at six. Full fifteen minutes he was in there, humming and washing himself. He got dressed, kissed her and was gone. Paulette went back to sleep even though she’d told Denton she could make him a breakfast and pack him a lunch, but Denton isn’t a man that likes a fuss, and anyway, he has to pick up the fool Garfield on his way to work so he can’t be late. Why Denton doesn’t just move in with her she does not know. Denton doesn’t like going out, doesn’t like noise and doesn’t like too many questions either, so how things are is how things are.

When Paulette starts to tell him how easy it would be if they lived together, cheaper too, that they could save more and get to their goal quicker, he kisses her and says, ‘Is today all right, Paulette?’ And she always says yes. And then he says, ‘Well, today is all anybody has got,’ and she can’t argue with the truth.

Paulette gets dressed in the uniform they give her for work, a dark brown colour that is so close to Paulette’s own skin that she seems to fade into it. Not that Paulette cares. Nursing auxiliary is a good job with maternity benefits when the time comes and until then it’s nice going home at night knowing you’ve helped people.

Take the old man who came in last week. For seven days, he didn’t get a single visitor. Not one. So, Paulette spent a bit longer tidying up his bed and bringing his food. Mr Siskins he was called, and he came from Yorkshire near the sea and talked with a nice accent. Said he used to make shoes and had his own shop. He sat up and showed her how he used to use a little hammer to knock tacks into the leather, his hands shaking, his voice weak and rasping. Told her about glue and stitching and polishing like Paulette didn’t have eighteen beds to fix and eighteen other patients to tend to. But still, the man hadn’t had anyone to talk to for a long time so while he told her about his two children living overseas, Paulette sat him in his chair while she changed the sheets.

‘Really?’ she kept saying. ‘Oh, that’s nice.’

But when he said he had a wife who died before she could retire, Paulette could hear the sorrow in his voice and, quick, quick, before he could dwell on the past, she asked him about his hobbies. Mr Siskins said he liked his garden and sometimes he played the piano in a little band with his friends. By the time she moved on, he was smiling and chatting with the man in the next bed.

Paulette likes them kind of stories from old people, it’s like reaching a hand into the future and imagining someone saying to her when she’s an old lady, ‘Where did you used to live, Paulette?’ and she will say, ‘Me? Oh, I lived on the Belmonte Estate, a little two-bedroomed house, 14 Rosamund Grove. But that was before I met my husband and got married. Then, when the kids came, we moved out to the countryside. Yes, me and Denton. I used to love cooking and I used to work at the Princess Alexandria Hospital as an auxiliary nurse. But now that we’re older and have time on our hands, me and Denton go travelling as much as we can to see the world.’

She’s quick downstairs, her feet drumming on the steps, into the kitchen to put some meat to season for later. She opens the fridge. Everything is ordered, one shelf for dairy, eggs and cheese, another for cold meat and cold food, and then fresh meat or fish on the bottom. Really, she needs one of them big larder fridges and a chest freezer for when she overcooks, but for a long time it was just Paulette on her own and the little under-counter fridge was fine. Now, with Denton and with children on the horizon, she needs a fridge fit for family. She might get a catalogue and see how much they cost. Pay weekly.

She takes out the mutton and scalds it with hot water, squeezes lemon juice on as it cools. She chops up an onion and garlic, adds thyme and salt, black pepper and a sprinkle of brown sugar in her spice mix. Not too much. She keeps her eye on the clock because she must leave at nine on the dot. She kneads the flesh hard to break up the tough fibres. To and fro with the heel of her hand until she feels it give, just slightly, and then she covers it over and puts it back on the bottom shelf where the goodness will seep in and do its job while she’s at work keeping the wolf from the door.

Time for a quick cup of coffee and a piece of toast. Her uniform is just a little tight these days and she’s been thinking about asking for a size up, maybe get a size 14 this time. But no, no, no. Paulette’s seen the women who let themselves go soon as they get a man and she’s not one of them. She throws the second half of her toast in the bin and smooths her hand over her stomach. No lunch today. And no chocolates from the sideboard in the staffroom. She checks the fridge. One piece of chicken left over that Denton couldn’t manage last night. That will be her dinner. One chicken leg, nothing else.

Quilted coat with a zip, loose hat on her greased-back hair, nice and neat, and a warm scarf, double-wrapped. Simple gold earrings and her crucifix. A check in the mirror. Her face always shines when she’s seen Denton. A sparkle in her brown eyes and the corners of her lips turned upwards. Everyone is pretty when they’re in love.

2

Paulette has to get two buses to work, the 61 into town, then a walk across Cathedral Green to catch the number 18 going north. Right near the bus stop, there’s a new children’s shop with pushchairs and cots in the window. She checks her watch. Ten minutes before the bus comes. She walks up to the front door and pushes it open.

It smells fresh, clean and new. There’s a choice of three different prams and a white highchair with a row of coloured balls on a loop that fixes on to the front, and then, when you want to feed the baby, it moves aside. Not too expensive neither. At the back of the shop there’s a little pretend baby’s bedroom with an ABC rug and a rocking chair with a footstool for nursing the baby. And in the centre of the room there’s a cot that becomes a little bed when you pull the levers on the side. Paulette’s never seen anything like it. A cot for a baby and bed for your boy or girl all in one. Bright yellow gingham baby quilt on top with a white-and-yellow tiger pillow. Just beautiful. Smooth wood, not made in some factory on the other side of the world. No, this is made by a proper carpenter with half-moon glasses and a little chisel in his hand.

A girl comes and stands next to Paulette. ‘Adele’ says the badge on her chest.

‘Lovely, isn’t it?’ she says.

‘Beautiful,’ says Paulette. ‘How much is it?’

‘Depends on whether you want the natural wood or the white wood. Or we do a limed oak. We’ve also got an opening offer, the whole package with the bed, the covers and the linen.’

Paulette likes the idea of a package where you get everything one time and you don’t have to wait.

‘And we do finance,’ says the girl quickly. ‘Is it for yourself? Or…’

‘Yes,’ says Paulette and without thinking, without no plan, Paulette’s hand moves over her stomach and stays there. The girl does the same and whispers, ‘I’m three months gone. Not really showing yet.’

‘Nor me,’ says Paulette and because she’s started and she wants to know what it’s like to say it out loud, because she wants the feeling that it could be true, because it might as well be, she just carries on. ‘I’m three months as well.’

‘Oh, congratulations!’ says the girl. ‘What’s your due date?’

But Paulette doesn’t have a calendar at the tip of her tongue so she just says, ‘Summertime.’

The two of them stare at the cot that becomes a bed until Paulette says, ‘I want the baby’s room ready early. How much did you say it was?’

* * *

When the bus comes, Paulette sits up at the front on her own. She faces the window but she sees nothing. Not the weaving, stuttering cars, not the headscarved women shopping for vegetables, nor the tears of rain chasing one another against the glass, nor the dark, dark sky meaning more rain, meaning Paulette getting soaked before she even starts her shift. No, Paulette is all the way back home, standing at the door of her second bedroom, seeing the carpet that she will rip up and change to mint green. And them purple curtains so thin you can see the morning sun right through them? Change them for pale green velvet with little silver moons and stars sprinkled all over so the baby has something to look at while it’s going to sleep. She sees the cot that becomes a bed and wonders if she should go ahead and put a down payment on it. But maybe that would be inviting bad luck. No, better to wait until she’s actually pregnant. Whenever it is, Paulette’s baby will have the best of everything and won’t be waking up too early because the mattress is uncomfortable or she didn’t invest in good blackout curtains, no. But then again, a baby will do whatever it wants and it’s the mother that works around it. So Paulette’s heard.

Paulette was lucky. She slept in the same bed as her grandmother until she was six years old. A small house at the bottom of the hill in Basseterre with a verandah wrapped right round the front and two steps down to the trickle of river that would dry up every summer. The smell of the Caribbean sea, the night rain beating down on the corrugated iron roof, soft as a lullaby, fierce as a fight. Granny slept hot like a furnace, same as Denton, and little Paulette would slide to the far corner of the bed to keep clear and get some sleep.

Sometimes when she woke up in the morning, Granny would be looking at her and smiling, calling ‘My Sweet Pea’ in her sing-song voice. Then breakfast of scrambled egg with chopped onion and pimento, Johnny Cakes and tea in Paulette’s special enamel cup, three sugars and condensed milk. Paulette sat on the floor between Granny’s legs to get her hair oiled and plaited.

‘What time is, Paulette?’ her grandmother would ask and Paulette would have to recite the Lord’s Prayer before she went off to school.

‘You hear that? Lead us not into temptation. That’s the most important one, Sweet Pea. And then love. And forgiveness,’ her grandmother would say. ‘Remember, now.’

Okay, so Paulette told the girl in the shop a white lie but really it was only telling the truth in advance. Sooner or later, she will have a baby. She doesn’t nag Denton about it because he likes to take one step at a time, but she knows he wants children, he told her so enough times, just not yet.

When Paulette’s baby is born, she’ll have it christened in the cathedral in town where all the upstanding people gather, where good families walk slowly up the path, arm in arm, in suits and hats and handbags. That’s where Paulette will thank the Lord and baptize her child into the Christian faith and have a little party afterwards. With her own hands, she’ll bake an iced-white fruitcake with pink edible roses round the edge. She will probably be married by then, but if she’s not, then their own child can be bridesmaid or pageboy, throwing petals on the floor.

Honeymoon is obvious. Jamaica for Denton and St Kitts for Paulette. There’s a few old aunties and a couple of cousins there. Not really people she keeps in touch with but if she had to call on family they’re the only ones left out there. So, a good couple of weeks in the sun while someone looks after the baby. But stop! There is no one on this earth Paulette would ever trust with her child, not one single person, so the baby will come too. Maybe by that time there would be two children. Maybe there would be three, who knows? But anyway, they will all go away together and make it a family holiday as well as a honeymoon. Sweet Pea, Denton and their little tribe.

* * *

Princess Alexandria Hospital, Men’s Ward, day shift. Every auxiliary nurse comes to the job with their own ways. For example, Paulette doesn’t mind feeding people, bed-making and cleaning, but she can do without bedpans and washing. If she’s on with Marcia and Tanya, they have a good system, swapping jobs and helping each other out until the shift runs sweet and quick and it’s done before you know it. Sister McKenzie always says that when the three of them are on shift, the world is a better place, but then Sister McKenzie knows how to get the best out of her staff.

Marcia just got married last month. Paulette was invited and Marcia said she could bring someone but Denton was on a job in Amsterdam so she went on her own and told Denton all about it while he was eating his dinner. Stew-down chicken, yam, green banana, sweet potatoes and coleslaw on the side.

Paulette likes to eat quick and then bustle about in the kitchen, chatting to Denton while he cleans his plate.

‘Who is Maria again?’ he says.

‘Marcia, Denton. She works with me. The one whose boyfriend bought the BMW. Well, it’s her husband now.’

‘The Three Series?’

‘I don’t know. It’s green.’

She fills his glass, wipes up a few grains of rice from her plastic tablecloth.

‘She looked lovely, Denton. They must have spent some serious money, that’s all I can say. White Rolls-Royce and six bridesmaids with little silver shoes and ribbons in their hair. And one pageboy at the front. Flowers everywhere. Shame you couldn’t come. Food, as much as you could eat, and a DJ all night. I got you a piece of the wedding cake for later. There was a really good sound system so I even had a little dance but some of the guys were getting too fresh. You know what they’re like when there’s a lot of drinking. Anyway, I didn’t get in too late but it was a really good night. Wish you could have come, Denton.’

‘Three Series is a good car but the Six or the Eight Series is better. Me and Garfield saw a nice one up Baldwins Lane last week. Garfield couldn’t stop talking about it. It was nice, man. Good shape.’

He reaches out and slides his hand around the top of her leg.

‘Talking of good shape…’

He tugs her away from the sink and on to his lap. ‘You’d look good in the passenger seat of a Six Series with a fold-down top, Paulette.’

She digs his fork into the last piece of yam on his plate and holds it to his lips, but he rears back.

‘No, P, I beg you.’

Paulette picks up his plate and slides the debris into the bin. ‘Marcia’s dress was what they call “blush” with pretty embroidery all up the edge of the veil. Tight, fitted here round the chest. She had her hair straightened as well. And a tiara.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah.’ She looks at him loosening his belt. ‘But you know what, Denton? Like you say, I could think of better uses for that kind of money.’

He takes the last sip of Appleton’s rum that she’s diluted with a little bit of water. He sits back in his chair. ‘My God, Paulette, don’t give me so much next time. My belly is hurting.’

‘You don’t have to eat it all, you know.’

‘I can’t say no to anything, Paulette, you know that,’ he says, grabbing her again, drawing her down. ‘I always want more.’

* * *

Marcia, who is thirty, and Tanya, who is thirty-four, are both married and Paulette is not. Then again, both of them had the good sense to choose a man who doesn’t work in European construction and can come home every night. Not a man who still keeps a room in his best friend’s flat, especially when that same best friend, Garfield, happens to be a fool with scutter-level morals. And Paulette has never seen this room, never been in it once. Denton says he’d be embarrassed to bring her there, because Garfield has different women every night, low-grade women he wouldn’t like Paulette to meet, and anyway, the place isn’t kept nice. Denton’s own bedroom is full of his records and his hi-fi and not much else, stuff that would mess up Paulette’s tidy house. And it’s cheap. Garfield doesn’t charge him much and it’s useful to have somewhere to lay his head for them rare, rare times him and Garfield go out late and come in making a whole heap of noise. Garfield is like that, a drinker and a playboy, and Denton is good to keep him around. Anyway, all in all, Denton will keep his little room until they’re ready to make the move to their new house together.

If you want the truth, Paulette’s getting impatient. Can’t help it. Tanya has a little boy, eight years old, and Marcia will take exactly five minutes to get pregnant because she’s like that, very ambitious and a bit superior. Paulette will be last. And they’re always saying that Paulette should put her foot down and make Denton show her that he’s serious. Both of them asking why she doesn’t bring him round to their houses and let everyone meet him. Or at the very least, make some kind of date for moving in. Nothing she hasn’t thought herself, but at the end of the day, Denton is different to other men. Denton is better looking, funnier, a big thinker with big plans and a big heart. And that’s all that matters.

3

A cherry-red Toyota Celica. 1600 GT. Leather seats and corner lights. Fastback. How many weeks was he talking about the car, telling her how good it looks and how everyone on the street stares when it drives past?

And she said, ‘Denton, that’s a car for popping style, not a car for a family. A car for racing, not for going to the supermarket.’

That’s what she said. And she said it more than once. And if it wasn’t for that car, which she begged him not to buy, there wouldn’t have been no accident, and if there hadn’t been no accident, Denton would be coming home to her tonight, kissing her at the front door and eating his dinner while they chatted about their day.

But no. Mould, grease, filth, dust, stains, dirt, creases, smells, marks. They will have to take his place. Cleaning and bleaching helps. Weeks she’s been at it. Paulette can rise in the morning and spend the whole day in the kitchen, moving Pyrex dishes out of cupboards, taking out her once-a-year saucepans to scour and put right back where they came from, putting the dining chairs up on the table so she can scald the floor with boiling water and good strong disinfectant.

The tops of the kitchen cupboards, which she is pretty sure she’s never tackled before, are scrubbed hard with the rough side of the sponge and then wiped, yellow grease staining the dishcloths. And when the kitchen is done and her eyes sting from the mixture of cheap chemicals and salt tears, Paulette starts on the bathroom.

She has six hours before her shift and that’s a long time to fill. But if you keep your hands busy and focus, focus, focus on the mould between them bathroom tiles then, before you know it, you’re not thinking of living without Denton. Because if you do think of him, gone for good, there’s nothing left but some survival instinct God created in you from the beginning of time. But she’s not sure about survival right at this moment because the will to carry on is not even skin deep, it’s lighter than that.

She stops suddenly, bent over the bath, scourer in hand, and closes her eyes. She’s trying to trace back to the moment before she knew. It was May. It was Sunday. It was evening when she found out but what was she doing when the accident actually happened? Ten o’clock in the morning. Twelve minutes past ten exactly. Was she stirring soup? Was she plucking her eyebrows? Muhammad Ali won the boxing and it was all over the newspapers. Is that what she was doing, reading about left hooks and uppercuts so she could join in with Denton when he told her all about it? Or was she sitting with a cup of coffee and a magazine, waiting for him to call, the low-level hum of desire as much a part of her as the breath and blood in her veins?

It won’t come. Everything before she knew has turned to mush, flipped and twisted. Days and weeks have blurred into a single moment. The knock on the door. Garfield there telling her to let him in, pushing past her with his renk self even though Denton wasn’t at home. He never came without Denton being there.

‘Paulette,’ he says, standing right inside her house, his eyes roving all over the room except at her.

‘What you looking for? What’s wrong?’

‘Denton.’

‘What about him?’

What she thinks right then, this she remembers good, is that the skinny, shifty Garfield, constant and dark as a shadow, is trying to tell her that him and Denton had been out and got involved in a fight, that Denton was arrested and is sitting in a cell up at Queens Road police station with a busted mouth. That would be Denton all over. Temper.

‘What’s he done?’ she says, folding her arms.

‘Paulette, I’m sorry. He’s dead.’

She kisses her teeth long and loud. Garfield is wrong, simple as that. Wrong in every way, wrong-looking, wrong sly fox intelligence and wrong morals, so Paulette isn’t even worried. Not one bit.

‘What you talking about, Garfield?’

‘He’s dead, Paulette. He’s gone. Car accident.’

‘Garfield, speak properly, man. You’re not making sense. Where? When?’

‘Today. Listen to me, Paulette. I’m telling you the truth. He was in an accident. He’s dead.’

Copyright © 2026 by Kit de Waal